Aggressive Puppy behaviour PLEASE HELP

[chrisUK263]

We have a 11 week old golden cocker, she was great for the first week, she was great at learning new skills; sit, house training ect but gradually she's becoming very aggressive & not just play biting. she growls and barks,bites really hard sometime & snarls at us when she doesn't get her own way, Usually it's when she has something she shouldn't and we try to say drop (Which she does know when she wants to) so we try take her away from the item and thats when it starts.

To try stop this we have used the "Yelp" and turn away technique but that usually gets her more excited and she will follow us and try bite trousers or feet.

any advice on how to prevent this? she will be able to go out for walks in about a week so we will be able to take her to dog training which i'm hoping may stop it abit.

[Eve]

Hi Chris,

Don't panic almost all of this is normal puppy behaviour. The biting is very normal, probably the begining of teething which she may be finding uncomfortable. Someone will come along soon and give you more advice.

You are not alone and from the sound of it you have a normal 11 week old puppy, just may be need to change your technique in dealing with her a little.

[Eve]

PS Forgot to say if you look at other posts re puppies you will see many others have gone through what you are experiencing at the moment at come out the other side.

[Geordietyke]

Hello Chris, yes it is normal puppy behaviour but it is a shock isn't it!  I went through exactly the same with my little golden 'crocker'!  I used to have him hanging off my trousers every time I got up to go somewhere.  The snarling and growling etc does seem excessive for such a little cute thing but it's all part of growing up and it's how they learn boundaries about what is acceptable and what isn't.  Unfortunately, Odie went on with this behaviour for weeks but he did calm down eventually  

I think there may be a stickie post on here which helps you deal with this behaviour and there are plenty of threads about this so don't worry, you are not alone in dealing with it!  Lesley

[chrisUK263]

thanks guys, i'm just wanting to find a good technique to take her away from what she is doing without the growing and barking. The word "Drop" followed by smell of a treat does the trick then when she drops she gets the treat but I don't want to give her too many treats.

[jessandme]

Instead of taking her way, or offering a treat, you could try distracting her away from whatever it is using a toy.  Cockers love squeaky toys, in case you haven't discovered that yet!

Also, as everyone has said, she will be teething and that can be quite uncomfortable for her.  We used to run under the tap a knotted strip of old teatowel and then freeze it, Jess thought this was a lovely treat.   Chewing something cold seems to be soothing.

Don't worry about the growling and biting, pups do vary with how much they do this, but it is all totally normal.  We were saying at one point that our Jessie must definitely have crocodile in her ancestry somewhere, she was doing it so much - not a cocker but a 'crocker'.   They do grow out of it, though!  If she does nip you, try not to pull away, that is where the damage gets done.  (Voice of experience there....   )

[Clover]

She sounds pretty normal    I'm afriad.  Crocker spaniel owner here, well, 4 years ago I was.  Things will get better, it's puppyhood and some are more than others.  Good luck with her.

[PennyB]

when you do distract her with somethgin like a squeaky and then she looks at you - praise her like mad (her lookign at you after doing something you don't want is the key as she's also breaking away from what she was doing) - using treats isn't a problem really either - the idea is when they get older you use treats just to train new things

I still use treats for my dogs when I teach them things

It will take longer than you expect for her to stop this - seems like ages sometimes - but its quite usual for a puppy (you should try terrier pups as they bite harder )

[mooching]

but gradually she's becoming very aggressive & not just play biting. she growls and barks,bites really hard sometime & snarls at us when she doesn't get her own way, Usually it's when she has something she shouldn't and we try to say drop (Which she does know when she wants to) so we try take her away from the item and thats when it starts.

As others have said, this is totally normal, and she's not being "aggressive" at all really, just puppyish. If you deal with it in the right way, she will grow out of it (mostly!  )

You mentioned when she has something she shouldn't - could I ask what sort of things those might be? Also, could you explain a bit more about what you mean by "we try to take her away from the item"?

Also, how do you react when she has something she shouldn't? What tone of voice do you take, what do you say, and how do you behave?

[Hurtwood Dogs]

You've had some great advice, she is totally normal

If you do have a pup that doesn't like confrontation then to try and avoid it. You won't be teaching her that she's in charge you just have to take the parent role and show her what you want from her kindly and reward her when she does it - if you are kind and consistent with a puppy you will get a kind and consistent adult dog . If she is guarding something never try and lift her up away from it for example, do as you're doing (lure her away) and reward her with praise and treats - you could even try using a bit of her normal kibble or natural stuff (a little bit plain cooked chicken) if you don't like manufactured treats. As others have mentioned rewarding dogs with food is a very helpful and positive way to train dogs my two are now 6 and 4yrs and I still always reward recall when we're on walks with food because I want them to be 100% at that always, and they both turn on a six pence every time I whistle without fail now. At home they do stuff I ask (like give the Lego back to the kids please ) mostly without treats now but they're so good at that because they had such a rewarding time learning it as youngsters if that makes sense? I'll still make a huge fuss of them when they do drop things for the children because it's important that they are rewarded for 'working' for me like that. If there is no benefit for performing a behaviour that it doesn't really want to then you are a lot less likely to get it consistently and may even end up with conflict between you and the dog.

The more time a dog does something when asked the more likely it will be to repeat that behaviour and the way to get them doing it lots (i.e. make it an ingrained automatic behaviour) is make it very very rewarding for them initially. She's very very young and I'd be expecting to use treats with simple 'leave it' type commands for a good few months yet if you want it to be a solid behaviour when she's older and you may have to up your reward game when she hits the teenage months and starts to rebel there.. but it will pay off in barrel loads when she's an adult I promise

Good luck and keep talking!

[ElaineH]

D'you know, I think the hardest thing about puppy-rearing is maintaining a sense of humour and staying calm of course  

Morgan was quite challenging in some ways when he was a puppy, not helped by the fact that it was many, many years since we'd had a dog let alone a puppy! We had to learn to start finding other places for stuff that we'd got used to having lying about, Morgan used to pinch anything and everything he could get his jaws round   He'd have absolutely loved to have us try to get things off him("chase me, chase me," "come and get it, I love this game!") so instead we got him to "swap".

At first, once he'd realised he'd get a treat (often just a bit of his kibble allowance) for handing his booty over, he'd pinch things just in order to get the treat, coasters from the coffee table being his favourite! Other people said that we were just encouraging him to steal but we felt it was teaching him to hand things over without a fuss.

Eventually he got bored with this game and he hardly ever pinches things now, except this morning when someone left the downstairs cloakroom door slightly open. Morgan sneaked in and pinched the whole toilet roll off the holder, I just saw him out the corner of my eye trotting proudly away with it   Just one call of "come and swap" and he came to hand it over in exchange for a small treat (the toilet paper wasn't even damp  ) Definitely a camera moment if only I'd had one to hand!  

Hang on in there, this normal puppy behaviour is very trying but it does get better!

[chrisUK263]

but gradually she's becoming very aggressive & not just play biting. she growls and barks,bites really hard sometime & snarls at us when she doesn't get her own way, Usually it's when she has something she shouldn't and we try to say drop (Which she does know when she wants to) so we try take her away from the item and thats when it starts.

As others have said, this is totally normal, and she's not being "aggressive" at all really, just puppyish. If you deal with it in the right way, she will grow out of it (mostly!   )

You mentioned when she has something she shouldn't - could I ask what sort of things those might be? Also, could you explain a bit more about what you mean by "we try to take her away from the item"?

Also, how do you react when she has something she shouldn't? What tone of voice do you take, what do you say, and how do you behave?

We try not to actually pick her up, but sometimes we have to because it's a childs piece of clothing and they start to panic or a nice t-shirt or trousers. But we tend to try distract with a treat or one of her toys. This works with a treat but only sometimes works with a toy. The actual aggression that i'm talking about i'll try to get a video of. I wouldn't consider it normal as it seems really nasty behavior actually trying to bite me to hurt me.


P.S. Would you recommend taking her puppy pads out of her crate. It used to be helpful, but recently she's started pulling them apart, They were good for when she wee'd or poo'd through the night which she is starting to hold but a few accidents every now and then.

[spanielcrazy]

If she's ripping up the puppy pads then yes, take them away  Some of the housebreaking pads are treated with something to attract puppies to use them so I think they are counter-productive in a crate anyway.

(and if she is shredding the pads, and if you have read any of the other puppy threads, I'd hold off on buying her any fancy bedding just yet  )

[ElaineH]

Can I ask how she's managing to get hold of the nice clothing you mentioned? Having a puppy certainly helped us to realise that we simply had to be tidier! We also put a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, mainly to prevent Morgan going up and downstairs before his joints were ready for it, but it also meant he couldn't raid the dirty linen bin (cockers seem to love socks and undies  )

Believe me, Morgan's puppy behaviour was pretty full-on at times, very, very bitey   it was easy to imagine he was deliberately out to get us but he was simply exploring his new universe with the only means at his disposal ie his mouth! We found that us yelping at him ( as is often advised) just wound him up even more   we used to mainly pop him into the kitchen behind a (yes, another one) baby gate so that he was removed from the situation and got no attention. None of these things worked overnight of course, constant and consistent behaviour from us eventually did work however. Hannah (Hurtwood Dogs) has a lot of experience in dealing with young children and puppies, have a "search" look and see what she's said in the past. Basically she recommends not having children and boisterous cockers freely associating for quite a few months.

[mooching]

We try not to actually pick her up, but sometimes we have to because it's a childs piece of clothing and they start to panic or a nice t-shirt or trousers.

Do you mean when a child/person is wearing the garment, or when it's lying around somewhere?

Could I ask how old your child/children are?

Like ElaineH, I was also wondering how she was getting hold of these clothes. Cockers are actually VERY good at getting the whole household to be tidier. My teenage daughter used to come in from school, throw her socks on the floor, leave her shoes lying around - needless to say, several chewed socks and stolen shoes later, she doesn't anymore! 

But we tend to try distract with a treat or one of her toys. This works with a treat but only sometimes works with a toy.

With Alfie I found that what worked the best was offering him an old knotted teatowel that he could happily latch onto and run off with or shake. I kept them at key points around the house so that they were easily within reach.

The actual aggression that i'm talking about i'll try to get a video of. I wouldn't consider it normal as it seems really nasty behavior actually trying to bite me to hurt me.

Believe me, it's normal croc-ker spaniel stuff. I know it can be upsetting if you're not used to it, but it really is just normal puppy behaviour.

You might find though that she's more inclined to do this when tired or over-excited, and if you can learn to read her cues as to when these are happening, or, even better, when they are approaching, you will be able to help her (and yourself) out by making sure she has time and space to rest, instead of going a bit OTT.

I'd agree about removing the pads. I put one in Alfie's crate the first night and he chewed it, so I just threw it away and gave the rest of the pack away on here!